Rule 19 Transfer Within the County

If your county's circuit court has more than one judge, your case doesn't have to stay with just one judge from start to finish. Any judge in that circuit can handle different parts of your case. This means one judge could handle your arraignment, another could take your plea, a third could preside over your trial, and yet another could hand down your sentence.

This flexibility also means these steps can happen whenever the court has time, not just on a set schedule tied to one judge's calendar. The goal is to keep cases moving efficiently when a courthouse has multiple judges available to share the workload.

For you, this means you might see different judges at different stages of your case. This is normal and doesn't mean anything went wrong with your case. It simply reflects how courts with multiple judges manage their caseloads.